rising

i want to revisit the hospital. the one in mirebalais, haiti. the one pih is building in conjunction with the haitian ministry of health (mspp). and i want to talk about it in the context of a jack johnson song. i’ll wait for something a bit less heavy to talk about my jack johnson pandora theory…the song going through my head is you and your heart. it’s a catchy pop song from his latest album, but could be from the other ones (surprise – no offense jack). anyway, he sings: you and your heart, shouldn’t feel so far apart, you can chose what you take, why you gotta break and make it feel so hard…

well, right now, me and my heart feel so very far apart. for lots of reasons. but mostly because a big chunk of my heart is in that hospital, in the dirt that’s being transformed into a world class facility, a beacon of what is possible when we set the bar high and are willing to do whatever it takes to get over it. but also for so much more. for me it represents rising up, out of the rubble. you see, zanmi lasante and its sister organization partners in health, was asked to support mspp at the general hospital in port au prince after it was essentially destroyed by the earthquake. it was the place where people brought their dead – to the morgue that reached capacity in mere hours after the quake and so bodies were stacked so deep and so wide you couldn’t pass. it was also the place where nursing students died while taking their lessons, crushed in their classrooms, under their school and left for weeks, only their smell signaling their presence. and beyond the walls, in tent hospitals, in the streets, the people of this country experienced things humans just aren’t built to witness and endure. this is when I realized how the natural disaster caused by tectonic plates shifting a few kilometers below the asphalt exposed the unnatural, systemic disaster of poverty…but the general hospital was also the place where, from the rubble, the team, joined by groups as different as the us army and the swiss red cross, was able to care for so many thousands of patients. the place from where hundreds of patients were med-evaced to the uss comfort for life-saving surgery. it was one of the few centers of emergency care in the middle of a city brought to piles of rocks and twisted steel in minutes.

before 5pm, january 12th, the hospital was the only public teaching hospital in the country. the new hospital in mirebalais is its replacement. we were already deep into the design phase to build a 100+ bed regional referral facility – still to be crown jewel of mspp in the central plateau. soon after the 12th, the team was asked to triple capacity and convert the facility to a national teaching center. so, for me, its very poetic that pih is able to restore the national teaching hospital, rising from the rubble as a sign of hope and healing, aligned with the slogan “build back better”. but also for me, it signifies a healing of the soul, of my soul (if i may be so selfish), to help restore all that was lost in the aftermath of earthquake.

i had the absolute privilege to work with the team until a few months ago when i finished up graduate school and took a job. now i’m in gabon helping to build the main stadium for the 2012 africa cup (the african men’s world cup qualifying tournament). on its own, this is a great job. my family will experience living in another country and we’ll get to see hippos and gorillas and some of the few remaining virgin rainforests left in the world. but its nothing to fill the breach of inequality. so i can’t stop thinking about haiti. a place that has taught me so much about structural violence, oppression, injustice, inequality, power, but also hope, faith and love. i owe her so much for restoring my faith in god and humanity and myself and i feel she needs to be loved and someone fighting for her. not by me alone, but still, if you know me, you know what i mean. i tried finding a way to make it work. but maybe i didn’t try hard enough. maybe i loved myself more than her. regardless, i’m here in libreville now – “free town”, where i don’t feel so free because me and my heart, we’re so far apart. maybe its timing, maybe i need preparation, maybe the world is bigger than haiti. but i can’t stop thinking about what i’m doing here and what i could be doing there, rising.

you ever felt that way?